It is easy now to obtain a knowledge of the ethical systems of the world, past and present. The kernel of each and its differentiating feature can be perceived, and its ability to minister to the moral in mind determined. Why did the Greeks, who claimed and held first place as mental and moral diagnostics, really miss the moral in man, and produce a religion which was mostly comedy? Why did Confucianism, with its "Do not to others as ye would not they should do to you," produce the diverse Chinese and Japanese civilizations, while the same kind of precept in the Christian system produced ours? Why did Taoism, with its "Love your enemies," flinch before Confucianism and collapse before Buddhism? Why did the whole ancient Western philosophy, the creation of the choicest minds, fail to salt and save society? Why did it run the world to moral wreck? Why did the Christian system in the hands of simple fishermen come upon that wreck and deliver it? Why did Hebrewism, the very religion of God, fail upon the very chosen people and produce a moral conjuncture which called forth the anathemas of a Christ and Paul? Comparative study shows all this. This comparison is the educational method. About half the courses of our colleges are only of mediate use in the affairs of life-of little practical value, as we say. A boy does not need Latin to run a steam engine, nor Greek to bind corn, nor natural science to deal in stocks, nor philosophy to cut hair, nor higher mathematics to tan skins. It is astonishing how little of these is immediately needed in what is denominated the practical life of the majority of people. Then why are they in? Why do they persist? Why must they be in? Not merely to help out a liberal education, but because they are essential to the development of mind--because of their relative and comparative value in mind building. Young students say, "We do not need this or that;" "We have no taste for this or that." If some were allowed to choose their own courses they could go to school twenty years and not become educated. They would always select the subjects which follow the line of least resistance, and their will power and application would lie dormant and undeveloped. There is just now a little too much "bent-following" which is not educative, but is the opposite. Away with the humanities if we can find a substitute. The substitute has not thus far appeared.

It is by comparison the student comes to know himself-in the contact and competition with fellow-students. This rubbing and comparing is the great boon of school life.

The method must be constructive. It is not enough to posit a soul; not sufficient to recognize the best moral. We must bring the mind and the best moral together in constructive activity. How is this to be done? It can be done only through the religious. To be religious, morality must include God. Atheistic theories are, therefore, defective. They lack the essential religiousmoral complement-God. Agnostic theories will not do. No moral character, very strong, can be made up of the "may be" or "may not be" of uncertainty, or any theory of "we cannot know." If we cannot know there is a God how can we construct the religious-moral character? Positivistic theories will not answer. Confucius, six hundred years before Christ, excluded God from his system and made a positivism. The mind must occupy itself alone with the concrete the human-he taught. And this is the reason that, while his doctrine went as high as the negative golden rule, it produced a Chinese people. The system which excludes the supernatural throws the mind upon itself, or at best upon other human minds, for the material for moral building. Present-day positivism is no better off. It has the Confucian defect. It bars out God and throws the soul upon itself or other souls as the only source of moral supply. Race history amply testifies that man is not sufficient for his own needs. Pantheism will not do. At its best it brings God to his highest consciousness in man. It is again man to satisfy man's moral need. Buddhism will not do. It places the moral in man under necessitated "cause and effect," and makes his only escape from moral evil the annihilation of consciousness; man is morally saved when he is totally extinct. Dualism will not suffice. This virtually lifts the moral conflict out of the hands of men; ulterior beings or principles fight it out to the victory of the good.

The religion of Christianity meets the case, and alone meets it. Its teaching is positive as to God a Spirit. God and man, their natures and mutual relations, are plainly defined. The relations are the most natural. God is a "Power not ourselves that makes

for righteousness." He is a Power, but a Person and Father. He is a Power by whose assistance man can realize himself-can come to the highest moral relation, ability, and activity. It is only man and God conjoined that can work out the true morality in man. Christian morality is religion. Christianity is not a written gospel. It is not a posited creed. It is a power "the It is not a new law. It is not an "old law with It is not a law at all. It is a power, a force. It moral realm. Paul said the Gospel is the power

power of God." new sanctions." is a force in the

or force of God. It is the mode of divine activity in the human mind. Here is what renders it constructive. It builds soul and is built into soul. It is moral power. Moral regeneration is man's reception of this God-power by which he can reach his highest moral ends. The Gospel meant good news of moral help brought to the soul from outside the soul. This moral power makes man altruistic. His highest self is self-fulness, and this is reached not by selfishness, but self-denial. He has a relation and duty to man infinitely higher than the positivist. But more, he is related to God. The denial of self-the subordination of self-gives the power right of way for the morally constructive.

The method must be objective. The teacher must possess not merely the theory of the highest moral; he must be the moral. Hence, if the religious-moral is to be distinct and dominant in the schools, the kind of instructors must be considered. Our Christian schools can have no place for teachers save those who are unquestionably religious-object lessons, "written epistles." This is the education which demands its rightful place-the making of mind, which is character, on the principles of God in Christ.

John Wier

ART. IX.-SOME ENDURING QUALITIES IN LITERATURE.

Ir has been pointed out with some show of justice that the comparative method of determining the worth of literature is unscientific and should cease. We are reminded that every great literary production is distinctly sui generis. It stands by itself, bearing no paternal or maternal influence. In other words, imitation never stamps itself upon a superlatively great piece of literature, and therefore we have no right to measure the genius of one by the literary yardstick of another. We are told that the matter of greatness is purely a matter of personal opinion, and are cited to a large number of literary men of the greatest eminence whose opinions concerning authors have ranged all the way to antipodal distances. The criticism of literature is conceived to be mainly a matter of caprice, and the inference is that there can be no adequate grounds for determining that which is of permanent value. While the essence of all literary criticism should have for its object the appreciation of literature rather than the measurement of literature, yet it soon becomes evident that there must be some basis of values in literature. The fact that there remains literature which has survived the storm and stress periods of a millennium shows that literature is not left entirely to the caprice of individual judgment. Neither can it be said that literary immortalities are the resultant of a continued and general popularity. Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides have been trickling their brain and heart blood through a few college professors and students, but they have always been caviare to the general. Ninety people out of a hundred who read Homer may not like him, and Milton is more admired than read. But no one presumes to say that these men are not entitled to good firm seats on Parnassus. We must acknowledge that there is a subtle process going on that is discriminating between the transient and the permanent in literature, swiftly and quietly at times taking many of the books over which the multitude pursed out its lips and cried, "Live forever," and putting the dust deep on their faces, and taking some of the books which grew in out-of-the-way places, crowned books for the ruling of the world.

We then hold that there is literature which has endured because there are certain qualities found in the productions. Our business now is to inquire concerning these qualities. Recent students—and here we must particularly mention Professor Winchester, of Wesleyan, whose book, Some Principles of Literary Criticism, is perhaps the best utterance upon the subject-have informed us that there are four qualities which enter into literature, namely, thought, emotion, imagination, and form. Of these four qualities one above all the others furnishes the distinguishing hall-mark of literature, and that is emotion. The thought element can be transferred easily from one place to another, and the names of various persons may be tacked upon it without doing injustice to any of the writers. No man calls a work on mathematics a piece of literature, unless it has something in it besides a bare discussion of principles. Scientific books which simply seek to unfold the principles of the science, historical works which relate in a cold, impartial way the doing of the past, are not to be included in what is called literature. Hallam and Stubbs, for instance, are looked upon as judicial historians, while Macaulay and Froude are made the targets for sneers from academic quarters. And yet it is frequently ignored that what these judicial historians never attained Macaulay and Froude have attained, and that is making a body of literature. You can transplant Hallam and Stubbs to other soils and give them other names, and you need not justly incur the charge of plagiarism. But the emotional element dies out of its environment. It is a rare thing lightly immeshed in a net of golden words, and the least jar of moving breaks the web and the emotion has effervesced. This is one thing that must be observed concerning the emotional element-it cannot be transplanted, and this must therefore be one of the chief qualities of literature. But emotion must be found in a matrix of other qualities before there can be any effective literature. The thought element must be combined. It is, for instance, psychologically difficult, if not impossible, for a person to be thrown into a high state of emotion with the first sentence of a book. The reader must be coaxed or wheedled along with some thought, some representation of a scene, until his interest has become aroused and he becomes eager to hurry